From The Philadelphia Inquirer:Two weeks before Election Day, and two days into the World Series, the house at Brookway and Montgomery Avenue in Merion was flying its partisan colors: Obama/Biden placards on the lawn, Phillies game on the tube.
The place bore all the signs of suburban Guyville: high-def television, copy of Men's Health on the coffee table, smell of mashed potatoes from the kitchen.
But the rancher, known as HomeWorks to its occupants, is no ordinary house. It's a groundbreaking experiment in independent living for three men with significant disabilities, and a model of public/private collaboration and creative financing.
For Michael Anderson, Will Keech and Kelvin Alston (pictured), its four walls mean freedom as well as refuge.
"People with disabilities want what we all want - a good place to call home," says Gail Hoffmann, executive director of the Self-Determination Housing Project, a Downingtown agency that promotes housing options for people with disabilities.
Traditionally, a house like this hasn't been easy to find, or finance. In Pennsylvania, state-supervised group homes are available only to those with mental illness or mental retardation. A single person receiving SSI payments can rarely save enough for a down payment on a house - if she can find one that's accessible or adaptable.
Typically, adults with disabilities end up living in apartments, in nursing homes, or with relatives. Anderson, Keech and Alston, and their families, dreamed of something different.
Ken Alston, Kelvin's dad, had cared for his 46-year-old son, who has spina bifida, at home for years, but worried about what would happen when he could no longer provide. Keech, 28, and Anderson, 26, who have cerebral palsy, had lived on their own while in college and itched for that autonomy again.
The three families, who knew one another through church or community connections, began to brainstorm: What if they could find a house near public transportation, in a neighborhood with sidewalks, where their sons could live together, pooling resources and sharing attendant care?
"All of a sudden, we parents came up with the name 'HomeWorks,' " says Susan Tachau, Anderson's mother and the self-described policy puzzle-master of the group. "We were going to have this home, and it was going to work."
The parents found property in Phoenixville. "Forget it," their sons said. Too far from Citizens Bank Park for Anderson, a sports fiend who volunteers at the stadium. Too foreign a neighborhood for Alston, who was raised on North 16th Street. Too remote from Keech's job greeting visitors at the National Constitution Center.
Then a friend spotted the rancher. It fit their criteria: near public transit, with a pharmacy, restaurants, a library and a bank within wheelchair-rolling vicinity. The question was how to foot the bill - for the $400,000 purchase price and the renovations needed to make the house accessible, and to pay for the 24-hour attendant care the men need.
Tachau, the puzzle-master, went to work. The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency offered low-interest mortgage rates and grants for down-payment and closing costs to first-time home buyers with disabilities. The Self-Determination Housing Project could help with home-modification expenses. All three men qualified for home- and community-based waivers under a state program; pooling those resources, they could finance round-the-clock care.
And while the men own the house, they and their parents formed a sort of mini-agency to receive state domiciliary-care funds.
"This is a first for us," says Jennifer Burnett, deputy secretary for the Office of Long-Term Living at the state Department of Public Welfare. "It was really outside-the-box thinking. It's a wonderful arrangement and took tremendous advocacy on the part of the families. We are amenable to replicating it, for sure."
In contrast to the traditional model of providing for people with disabilities, "this was an idea that came from the three men," says David Gates, senior attorney and policy director for the Pennsylvania Health Law Project, who advised HomeWorks on creating the ownership structure. He acknowledged, though, that HomeWorks would be hard to replicate in a high-cost community like Merion without substantial family resources.
Finding and financing the house was just the beginning. Before Alston, Keech and Anderson could roll their wheelchairs through the front door, the threshold would have to be flattened, the doorway widened. The families spent most of 2007 overseeing a gut rehab of the house.
They reinforced walls to support grab bars. They created a double bathroom with a roll-in shower and a magic-eye sink. In went emergency pull cords for the three bedrooms, and living-room flooring sturdy enough not to torque under the weight of three mechanized chairs.
Friends, neighbors and relatives jumped into the effort. Congregants at Main Line Unitarian Church, where Tachau and Ann Keech first met, gave the men a move-in "shower" with items from Bed Bath & Beyond. An artist friend painted a mural of Citizens Bank Park on the wall of Anderson's room. Members of Tachau's book group made the men a coffee table.
The house is finished now, though the household is a work in progress. Anderson and Keech grew up with siblings, but Alston was an only child. "It was hard learning to share things," he says.
And though the three have common interests in sports, politics and history, living together has put all their differences on display: Anderson is exuberant, even at 7 a.m., while Keech and Alston are more reserved. Keech likes to tape West Coast baseball games and watch them at his leisure - he didn't want Anderson dissecting each inning over breakfast.
The men hashed out agreements. "Everyone should avoid being critical and judgmental" heads the list, now taped to the refrigerator. They've also discovered complementary strengths: Keech has some use of his hands, while Anderson is precise about schedules, and Alston, who is legally blind, has an extraordinary memory for phone numbers and dates.
"These guys go out an awful lot," says Solar McCoy, team leader for the men's attendants. "They decide where they're going to go, when they're going to come home, what they're going to eat."For the parents, HomeWorks is a bittersweet emblem of their sons' autonomy.
After 46 years of caregiving, nine of them solo since his wife died, Ken Alston says it has been hard to let go. "Kelvin accuses me of worrying too much."
Ann Keech says her home is quieter since Will moved out. "But waking up in the morning and not having the to-do list - Is his lunch made? Will paratransit come? - is a huge relief." Now, she and her husband "can start thinking about downsizing and our later years."
For the men, HomeWorks means snipping ties that anchored them to their parents.
"The best part is being able to invite who I want," Anderson says. "I can call friends and say, 'Can you come over?' "
"I like having more freedom here," Alston says. "I never went out that much when I was living with my father."
The three moved in on Martin Luther King's birthday. "I loved the symbolism: 'free at last' and 'having a dream,' " says Ann Keech.
On that January day, while friends and neighbors assembled Ikea furniture, Anderson orchestrated the setup of his room: bed here, desk there, two blue seats salvaged from Veterans Stadium against that wall. The whole crew celebrated with take-out pizza. And then, finally, the parents said goodbye.
"I miss watching sports with my dad, but I'm proud to live here," Anderson says.
"It feels great," Alston agrees.
"It was very exciting, moving in," Keech says. "We own this house. We're showing people that we're just normal guys who are trying to live our lives."
